Gyms can make breaking up hard to do

Elliott joined a gym in 2004. That was the easy part. Canceling his membership, as he recently discovered, is a lot harder.

There are lots of good reasons to join a gym or fitness club, not least the fact that we increasingly eat too much and don't get enough exercise.

But it can seem as though some gyms go out of their way to make canceling a membership as difficult as possible. Maybe not as bad as AOL used to make things for its legions of dial-up Internet customers, but close.

Why do gyms do this? And what can you do to make things go more smoothly? Check out today's Ask Laz video for the answers.

If you have a consumer question of your own, email me at asklaz@latimes.com or contact me via Twitter using the hashtag #AskLaz.